


core, hands, voice

by Icestorm238



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Child Neglect, Drabbles, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Mild Gore, i haven't written anything for almost a year, if it takes 70 words per character to get me writing again then fine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:13:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28781793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Icestorm238/pseuds/Icestorm238
Summary: a study of the siblings' relationships with the body parts that channel their powers
Kudos: 39





	core, hands, voice

His core is where he nurtures his strength. His siblings’ powers are extensions of themselves but his is ingrained - no glow, no trigger phrase, no effort. As natural as breathing. As natural as leadership should be. He is Number One, the core of the team. And as his team leaves - one missing, one dead, four abandoning their cause - as they leave him alone, he gathers his strength, and he waits.

  
  
  


His hands are his offence. His hands are his defence. The perfect soldier, bundled into his hands. There’s a reason villains fall before the innocents can come to harm, and it’s the knives flung from his hands. There’s a reason bullets curve around his siblings but never hit, and it’s the redirection channelled through his outstretched hands. He is sword and he is shield. His hands make him a hero.

  
  
  


Her voice is her greatest weapon and her greatest shame. Abused and misused and finally in disuse, the cords slit, the rumours no longer able to hurt. She loves her daughter more than life, but love wasn’t enough to spare her from her mother’s voice. She rumoured her daughter into a doll, spoken into perfection, and she never once considered that she might be wrong. She will never forgive herself.

  
  
  


His hands are where he keeps his heart, offered to all willing to take. And taken it is, taken to be stamped on, crushed underfoot, squeezed and compressed and bled dry until he has nothing left to bleed. He should rescind it, hold out a  _ GOODBYE _ and cut his losses, but whenever he starts to try  _ HELLO _ always reaches back out, heart in its clutches, and the cycle begins again.

  
  
  


His hands are his tools, the conduits of the brilliance channelled down from his brain, the foster of his survival. They scribble equations, they scavenge for supplies, they drop him into apocalyptic wastelands. His hands are proud, too proud, too arrogant, blue light enveloping them and  _ look, he did it, isn’t he amazing, _ but always carrying him away, away from safety, away from his family, away away away into hell.

  
  
  


His core is where he contains it. They call him the heart of the team, but he struggles to find room for a heart in the monster’s enclosure. It fights, determined to escape, to devour and destroy. One day he fears he will be the one devoured and destroyed, his body coated in the blood and gore not of his enemies but of himself. That his monster will be free.

  
  
  


Her core is where she hides, where forgotten power simmers in its rumoured prison. She is ordinary, they say, so ordinary she is - ordinary is all she has ever known, all she will ever be, all she can ever hope to be. The outcast, the unwanted extra, the burden, the mistake. She is ordinary surrounded by the sublime, but- she’s ready to break out. It’s her turn to be extraordinary.


End file.
